Sydney's Kid Sister

I've been in Melbourne since Monday afternoon, and I've already fallen for this city. Hardcore. I was informed the other day that Melbourne is the #1 tourist destination among Aussies themselves. That's gotta mean something. It's a lot like Chicago...Aussie style. Yep. I'm going to love my time here. I think I've got the perfect way to characterize the difference between Sydney and Melbourne: they're like two sisters from one (or many) of Jane Austen's novels. I realize that in making this particular simile I leave 50% +/- 10% of the population in the dark (*cough* boys *cough*). Here's a little aside for all you guys out there: Guys, educate yourselves on Austen. She understood analytic people, and she was extremely clever (and not a little bit smart-alecky, which is the best part). And, most of all: women like a man who likes him some Austen. It's hot. (Can I get an amen, sisters?) Note this well, and subsequently ignore all those socially-manufactured unspoken gender constraints. They suck. These constraints are also the reason many women do not watch college basketball. Ladies....you're missing some seriously good stuff (and I don't just mean the athletes themselves).

Ok. Caveat over. Back to the Austen simile: Sydney is the older, lovely sister. She is that pristine, traditional, charming sort of creature that every one adores (uh, that maybe does crack on the weekends? Nevermind *that* particular aspect of Sydney...). Many seek after her for her loveliness and wealth of other good qualities, but there's a certain lack of flare or whimsy about her that leaves some a bit...restless. Then there's Melbourne. She is the younger, vibrant, hip sister who is still quite pretty, but whose primary captivating feature is her passion and uniqueness, and perhaps even her complexity. The kind of liveliness you find on the streets downtown even mid-afternoon on a Tuesday catches you up in it. Full of unique little bars, cafes, shops...on every street and down every alley are a multitude of various (largely independent) venues to discover. I could spend my entire three weeks here exploring a single street and not be satisfied. Melbourne Uni is right smack in the thick of it, too. Fab. The city has a younger feel to it, too. Sydney seemed to be filled with mostly older, wiser...more tired business folk (and if there were younger ones, they seemed to adopt this more serious countenance). So far I have mostly seen younger, energetic persons hustling about Melbourne in their trendy dark winter-garb. (By the way, it has been my own quiet rebellion to wear bright, summery colors whilst in the cities of Australia...because it is summer for ME, and I really would rather wear bright colors anyway. *Especially* because it has been cloudy and drizzly here of late.)

My new host, Terri, is great. She's probably in her mid-30s, and has a quiet little two-bedroom flat in Hawthorn (an Eastern suburb-- my commute to Uni is now only 25 minutes and not 70! Huzzah!) that she so wonderfully has allowed me to crash in for a few weeks for hardly any rent at all. She does some sort of administrative work for a company associated with Australia's universities. She intelligent and tall and loves to cook (already on the first night she cooked me salmon with fresh herbs from her balcony and a nice port, mashed sweet potatoes and cream, and roasted potatoes & garlic w/ capsicum...and fresh banana bread!), and when she saw me unpack The Silmarillion she immediately and joyfully pointed me to her enormous collection of Tolkien. Kindred spirits, we. She also really likes jets.

Melbourne has been great for lots of reasons already. For the reasons I've mentioned above, but also for reasons of companionship and scholarship. One geeky reason in particular is that I've been working quite a bit already with the Archive for the History of Quantum Physics, which is housed at Melbourne (and a few other places worldwide), and which is a veritable gold mine of papers, correspondences, interviews, etc. from all my most favorite physicists. (Is is strange to want to be friends with people who've been dead for many years now?)

Another reason I've felt more at ease here is that Kristian-- the prof. who helped arrange my visit-- is not much older than I am, and we'd already become friends when he visited Notre Dame last spring. It's loads less pressure than working with Guido side by side each day, as my work here is independent (Kristian and I are not officially collaborating on anything-- just having lots of great talks about our common interests and bouncing ideas off each other). Also, my interactions here are more relaxed because Kristian is in history not philosophy, so I can get away with b.s. sometimes, which I couldn't do with Guido, who is a big person in my very small, precise field. And I know more German than Kristian does (though now it looks like I'll need to learn some Danish, too. Oye vey). At any rate, it's always much easier to be a "scholar" when you can get away with loads of stuff. I mean, that's what we do. We get away with stuff. Don't deny it, my dear fellow esotericists. On a serious note, though, because Kristian is in a different field, we bring different 'ways of thinking' to the table--different perspectives to questions we've both been turning around in our heads for a long time. So that type of engagement can be extremely beneficial, as opposed to always talking to people in precisely the same field, and inundated by the exact same literature. This is in part why I think HPS scholarship has great merit even apart from its specific content.

I've also had a chance to meet many of the philosophy grad students here already. We went out to an Irish pub for beer and steak on Tuesday night(are ALL pubs Irish, quasi-Irish or pseudo-Irish? It seems that these are the only places people want to take me, which is hilarious and ironic owing to the fact that 1 of South Bend's 3 decent bars is, in fact, an Irish pub.) Oh well; the beer and food were good. I was informed by the grad students that people eat Kangaroo. Roo Steak, they call it. I'm not sure how I feel about this at the moment. Isn't that sort of like people from the States eating Bald Eagle Steak or something?


They Mel grad students are great fun. The guys are very quirky (shocking, I know) and the girls are witty, and the three I've met so far are also quite beautiful. They told me that their particular situation was strange: nearly all of the guys are in serious and/or long-term relationships (NOT with other philosophers) while the women are, for the most part, single. This launched us into a fascinating discussion (not the first on my part, to be sure) as to whether or not it's harder for women who are in the academy to date than it is for men in the academy. Answer: YES, YES, and YES! The answer to the Why question is still up in the air. But let's leave that aside for the time being, as I have a thought:

Dear Notre Dame Single Male Grad Student Friends,
You ought to visit Melbourne! These women are fantastic, and for the most part they are single. In a city of this size and fabulousness, and as compared to South Bend's size and *ahem* fabulousness (the *ahem* can/should be replaced by a negation)--given these things, a rather simple (in principle) remedy to these complementary situations becomes apparent. And while I don't necessarily condone or even wish to encourage "academic inbreeding" (i.e. dating a person in one's own discipline) in general, I think allowances can perhaps be made in international circumstances.
Your Notre Dame Female Grad Student Friend,
Elise


On a different note, yesterday it took me 2 hours to go grocery shopping for a week's worth of groceries. Grocery shopping/cooking for oneself is an adjustment in a foreign country, although it can be an exciting and sometimes rewardingly weird experience. For instance, I'd never heard of 2/3rds of the items in the meat section, and the fruit section had kumquats. I ardently love kumquats. I mean, you don't have to peal them or anything. Perfect bite-size citrusy tidbits. And then there was the chocolate section...Oh, the chocolate section..... 88% Cacao, Red-chili pepper, rum-and-raisin. I must have lingered there for the better part of 15 minutes. I spent another 1 hour and 15 minutes trying to find tomato sauce. Which they call tomato paste. Tomato SAUCE is actually ketchup. But this is puzzling. If our ketchup is their tomato sauce, and our tomato sauce is their tomato paste, then what could our tomato paste be? And why do we have so many blasted varieties of squishing up tomatoes in the first place? And would it be too much to ask the world to be consistent in adopting terms for the ridiculous number of varieties of mushy tomato stuff?



Another little item of note I stumbled across was a package of Seaweed-flavored biscuits. And by 'item of note' I mean item to ridicule. I mean, gross. Seaweed biscuits? Yeah, sure! Just plop a mite o kipper on 'er in the morning and away yeh go! Oh seafood. It's everywhere; I can't escape it. I realize I'd be in heaven with all this amazing seafood everywhere (most of it prepared in excellent Asian restaurants), but I just don't like the stuff. I've tried much of it, and some of it many times...but the end result is always the same. Gross. I tried Salmon yet again the other day when Terri made it for me...and I could recognize the fact that it was prepared very well. But I still only ate because that's what mom taught me to do when someone makes food for me (or maybe grad school taught that to me...). But the slimy, fishy stuff is everywhere. The student union here has THREE different seafood/sushi-type places. On a happier note, it also has a vegan deli, a vegetarian deli, and two organic delis. And a vegetarian donut shop (I assume its vegetarian, at least). In one, marvelous building. Double fab.

Well, I need to go and prepare some dinner-- the fruits of my grocery excursion yesterday (literally?). I think I'll have some of that rum-and-raisin dark chocolate too...

P.S. New Zealand stuff forthcoming... I'm still getting settled here and at the Uni. Probably by this weekend, though.

P.P.S. Val, you twerp. You don't tell your best friend that you're in love via a comment on her blog! You incredible nerd... Oh yeah-- and: (i) I already knew it (ii) HURRAH!!!

P.P.P.S. Oh, and one other thing: This morning I watched a few minutes of an Australian kid's tv program while I ate breakfast (apricot muesli with yogurt and two pieces of toast with peanut butter and dark chocolate) and also while I cleaned up after yesterday's shenanigans. (Terri is out of town for 3 days, and on the first day Elise does laundry and the washing machine floods the bathroom. On the 2nd day Elise also gets shampoo in her eyes. Am I doing it wrong? What the heck! Jodie even cut my hair in Sydney! Sheesh) Anyway, the kid's show was...weird. Like all kids shows with two adults playing make-believe and singing silly songs about delivering "the post" or having a pajama party. Thank goodness my life is in place. I think if I start to go mad or have a real mental breakdown, I'll either (i) start doing a lot of gardening, (ii) try to mince squash with a plastic butter knife, or (iii) become a character on a kid's television program about outer space or something. Actually, now that I think about it that sounds like fun...